‘Forest bathing’ and more: Trying out Airbnb’s ‘experiences’

Nothing sucks the fun out of a Saturday afternoon like fighting through hordes of tourists pointing cameras at enormous, barking marine mammals, lugging armloads of shopping bags and chowing down on clam chowder.

But, thanks to a new feature from Airbnb, there’s now an alternative to traditional sight-seeing. Since launching its “experiences” feature last November — a major step that put the home-sharing startup on track to become an all-inclusive travel platform — Airbnb has tripled the program’s reach, and now offers more than 1,800 offbeat activities hosted by locals in 30 cities around the world. That includes 300 experiences in San Francisco, ranging from a ramen cooking class, to a sailing lesson on the Bay, to a tour of the Mission District’s murals. There’s also a handful outside the city, including a trip to a Watsonville farm, a cultural walking tour of Berkeley and a beer-making class in Santa Rosa.

I tagged along on two, to get a taste of what these excursions are like:

On a recent Friday morning, two groups of strangers met on a street corner in San Francisco to check a unique experience off their sight-seeing itinerary: “forest bathing.”

Started in Japan as a way for urban dwellers to re-connect with nature, forest bathing essentially means taking a leisurely hike, with plenty of pauses to do things like talk to a tree or listen to the sounds of nature. For this group of four tourists, it meant a walk through Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve — a little-known eucalyptus forest near Twin Peaks in San Francisco.

“For people visiting San Francisco, I think it’s a great way to see a side of the city that you might not otherwise see,” said the day’s host, 29-year-old Julia Plevin, who lives in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Plevin started the trip by inviting everyone to spend 15 minutes walking slowly and silently through the eucalyptus trees shrouded in early morning mist. Later she instructed her charges to imagine that they had just landed on Earth, and asked them to make observations about the plants growing in the foreign landscape around them. Yvonne Scharf, 54, of San Diego, quickly got into the game, pointing out a fern and a moss-covered log to her friend, Linda Rickard, 57, as if it were the first time she’d seen such things.

Scharf, a lover of trees, had wanted to show her friend Muir Woods, but decided it was too difficult and expensive without a car. Paying $25 per person for a forest bath at Mount Sutro seemed like a perfect alternative.

The group walked a total of about 3.5 miles, stopping periodically to nibble wild blackberries and nasturtium blossoms growing along the trail.

For Plevin, these weekly walks allow her to make money doing what she loves — sharing tranquil nature experiences with others. She started a forest bathing group in 2015 — one of the first in the U.S. — and the concept has exploded since then. Her group has 500 members now, and NPR, CNN and even WebMD have written about the practice.

Heather Bailey of Vermont said the walk gave her a chance to experience a tranquil part of a seemingly busy city.

“It was really awesome,” said 69-year-old Bailey. “I felt like we really connected with the earth while we were walking through the forest, and there was really no city here.”

When you think of “painted ladies,” chances are what comes to mind is the famously stunning — and famously touristy — row of Victorian homes across from Alamo Square Park. But the city has many more hidden Victorian gems if you know where to look.

The first stop of this historic walking tour was the Queen Anne Hotel at Sutter and Octavia streets, where the group of about a dozen tourists went inside and got a first-hand look at an ornate Victorian interior. From there, the tour wound through the Lower Pacific Heights and Pacific Heights neighborhoods, following host Jay Gifford as he skillfully avoided hills. Impressive Victorians were scattered all along the walk, and 61-year-old Gifford, a self-taught architecture expert who has lived in San Francisco since 1979, seemed to know the history behind most of them.

Gifford even showed the group the house where “Mrs. Doubtfire” was filmed, and the home a few doors down where Robin Williams once lived.

Gifford has been giving his Victorians walking tour for 20 years — ever since he was laid off by IBM. But it became increasingly hard for his small business to compete with the tour buses and large platforms like TripAdvisor. Business has spiked since he began listing his tours on the Airbnb platform in May. These days, nearly every tour has 10 people — up from the three or four, or sometimes zero, he saw before.

He charges $25 per person, $5 of which goes to Airbnb.

If you take his tour, you might learn architecture nuggets such as:

— There’s three main styles of Victorian houses in San Francisco: Italianate (built between 1860 and 1870), Stick/Eastlake (1880s) and Queen Anne (1890s).

— A Victorian house that has been modernized, with its traditional flourishes covered up, is called a “smothered” Victorian — which pains Gifford to see.

— The iconic bright colors that have become synonymous with San Francisco’s Victorian homes aren’t traditional. The houses originally were painted dull, muted colors, and it wasn’t until the hippie movement of the 1960s that vivid Technicolor became the trend.

The tour packed in a lot of information, but it didn’t bore Bob and Sue McQuillen of Melbourne, Australia. The couple were staying at an Airbnb in Pacific Heights, and used the Victorians tour as a way to learn about the neighborhood they called home for a few days.

“All the little things you don’t know and can’t even read in a book,” Sue McQuillen said, “it brings the place to life a little bit.”

IF YOU GO

Urban Forest Walkabout — Reconnect with nature through the increasingly popular practice of forest bathing as you walk through the Mount Sutro eucalyptus forest in San Francisco.

Length: Two hours, though the walk I went on lasted about two and a half

Cost: $35 (price recently increased)

Learn more: airbnb.com/experiences/19467

San Francisco Victorians — A historic walking tour highlighting the city’s most famous type of architecture

Length: Two and a half hours

Cost: $25

Learn more: airbnb.com/experiences/66040